Mad Anthony Stew

Recipe for Mad Anthony Stew:

You will need:
several gallons of fresh well water
1 large cauldron or kettle
1 butcher knife
1 boning knife
1 saw
1 shovel
1 13 year old oak casket-aged, well preserved corpse of General Mad Anthony Wayne
2 quarts of bourbon
serves one

1. Fill the cauldron with water and place over a fire. You want a nice rolling boil.
2. Drink all of the bourbon, you will need it to complete the next steps.
3. While the water is coming to a boil, dig up the corpse of Mad Anthony Wayne with your shovel.
4. Remove the uniform. You will want this later!
5. Next, remove the head using a saw to sever the spinal cord.
6. Divide the body into equal quarters with the butcher knife. 
7. Using the boning knife, separate and remove as much meat from the bone as possible and set aside.
8. Boil the bones in the cauldron until the clingy bits of tendon and meat fall off easily.
9. Cook down until it is a thick broth. About 30 minutes.The bones should be nearly clean by then.
10. Remove the boiled bones and pat dry. Place them into a large box and give to Issac Wayne.
11. Return the remaining broth, raw fillets  organ meat, uniform and utensils to the original grave. Pour the broth over this and reseal.
12. Enjoy!

Perhaps you would like a little background...

General Mad Anthony Wayne, after Gen. Harmar and Gen. St. Clair failed, was the heroic frontier General who finally defeated the Indians in the Old Northwest Territory at the 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers. The resulting 1795 Treaty of Greenville he negotiated ceded most of Ohio to the Americans and ended major hostilities in the region, until Tecumseh came along and stirred things up again in the early 1800s.

Fallen Timbers monument in Maumee OH

Born January 1st 1745 in Pennsylvania to Irish immigrant parents, Wayne served in the American Revolution, and became a good friend of President Washington as a result. However his legacy will always be his service in the Old Northwest Territory. Countless, cities, counties, townships, businesses, parks, roads and schools are named after him all across the US but predominantly in PA, OH, and IN. He essentially saved the US Army and the country from ruin at a pivotal time for our young country. Remember, most of the standing US Army had been wiped out at St Clair's Defeat just a few years earlier. Despite all this you would be hard pressed to find anyone that really knows anything about him these days. Over time his status diminished giving way to new heroes I suppose.

Mad Anthony was a nickname given to him for his strict disciplinary military methods. One time Wayne sentenced five Army deserters to death. He carried this out by having the hair and eyebrows shaved off of one of the deserters, had him lashed 100 times and a "D" branded on his forehead. Then he had this man execute the other four. Tough love. The Shawnee referred to him as "the chief who never sleeps" and nicknamed him Black Snake. Up until then the Native Americans could usually predict the methods and patterns of their foes but this General even marched at night. It was these things that earned him fear and respect of friend and foe. A man of his stature would surely be given proper respect even in death. You would think.

do NOT park in Wayne's spot. He will mess you up.

Wayne died at the age of 51 in PA on December 15 1796 unexpectedly after a painful gout attack which was a fairly common ailment in those days. This was just over a year after the events that made him a legend. He was buried in Erie PA near where he died. In 1809, his son Isaac claimed that his Father's wish was to be interred at the family plot in Radnor PA. He rode up on his horse and buggy, had the body exhumed and expected to only find bones. Everyone was surprised to find a fairly well preserved body. No one at the time was really sure why the body was in good shape after 13 years in an oak casket but Issac wasn't prepared to take a whole body back. So they did what made sense. They got a bigger buggy right? Not quite.

They dismembered Wayne's body and boiled the flesh off in a big cauldron. Yes, you read that correctly. They cooked Mad Anthony's corpse, took the bones out, put them in a box and reburied in the original grave, the remaining flesh, his uniform and the instruments used to dismember the body.

Issac then took the bones on a 400 mile journey back home. But the horror doesn't end there. Along the way the box fell off the cart several times spilling the bones everywhere. In the process many of the bones were lost along the way and were never recovered. What remained of the bones were reburied in Old Saint David Church Cemetery in Delaware County PA on July 4th 1809. There is a legend that Wayne's ghost haunts Route 322 in search of his bones.

The blockhouse that was constructed at the original grave in Erie PA burned down in the mid 19th century. The grave site was pretty much lost until 1878 when it was rediscovered. The blockhouse was then rebuilt and the items that were buried in 1809, his uniform and the dissection tools were buried once again. Maybe there is a little Mad Anthony Stew left there too.